Yes, the vine being planted ( or let to grow ) is a deliberate choice :). It's not unique to Japan thou.
> I don't understand how people can willingly spend every couple of hours every week to trim their lawn to a pristine, perfect cube of grass.
The funny thing is that you will fine plenty of Western-style gardens in Japan too: perfectly trimmed, symmetrical, sometime even next to Japanese garden. Japanese aristocrats quite love this back in the day.
Surely gold is different from just account balance right ? They promised to actually keep those gold in the vault, and not spend the gold and keep only the equivalent in bank notes.
Both are very beautiful to me, because I haven never seen either of them.